Pornstar

by Ian Gittler

  “THERE WON’T BE ANY PRESS, SO YOUR PICTURES COULD BE VALUABLE,” SEAN MICHAELS says. “And remember, it’s a costume party.”

  Sean is currently the biggest black male actor in the business. He’s doing his own movies, too, says he’s on a mission to “break down all the old racial stereotypes.”

  “Like the John Singleton of porn?” I ask.

  He laughs, then says, “Did you know I directed Girlz ’n the Hood?”

  Sean’s building is a couple of blocks south of Sunset. The party is being thrown in a sparsely furnished lounge on the first floor, not his apartment. Sean is friendly, but he speaks low and soft, so it’s hard to hear him over the stereo. A square-looking white guy tells him the tap isn’t working. Sean puts his arm around the guy, who has microbrewed a batch of beer especially for this party, and excuses himself to deal with the problem.

  Buck Adams, Amber Lynn’s brother, and Cal Jammer, both porn actors, are here. They’re dressed like suburban frat boys—baggy drawstring pants with Aztec prints and elastic ankles, oversized varsity T-shirts, all freshly laundered like college jocks. Except Adams looks middle aged.

  They joke around with a girl in a Snow White/Little Red Riding Hood/Easter bunny outfit, her fur bra covering an obvious tit job. Maybe she’s supposed to be Pebbles.

  Sikki and Tom arrive in shorts, flannel shirts, and leather jackets, their street clothes. Grunge uniforms. Jeanna is still on the road. Jamie’s still in Guam.

  Sikki introduces a little girl with red hair who’s dressed as a flapper.

  “Hey man, I want you to meet Flame,” he says. “You should take her picture. Flame, you should meet this guy. You should be in his book.”

  For a snapshot with Sikki and Tom, Flame bares her teeth like an angry little doggie, and pulls her dress off her shoulders, flashing her freckled, white, flat chest. Sikki says she’s eighteen, but Flame looks younger.

  Flame’s boyfriend is Rob, a PA on porn shoots. He’s the kid brother of another porn actress, a famous one named Raven. Rob is a cowboy, but it’s a kid’s costume—the hat is way too small for his head, and his holster and guns are tiny. He has black makeup around his eyes. Flame met Rob on one of her first shoots.

  The girl in the Pebbles costume is Trixie Tyler. She doesn’t have anything to say, seems dumb, humorless, but sexy anyway. She’s hesitant, seems skeptical, and looks bored. Sikki flops down on the sofa.

  He says he worked with Flame. “This week was the first time. She’s a little angel.”

  Sharon Mitchell arrives with John Stagliano, a director who calls himself Buttman. Mitchell looks late thirtysomething. Her short hair is slicked back in a DA, and her makeup is silvery seventies glam. She’s in a leather body suit with slits that reveal her nipples. Stagliano is dressed as a priest in horn-rimmed glasses, except from the waist down he’s in fishnet stockings, a garter belt, G-string, and black pumps.

  Mitchell is totally approachable. She has a husky, soothing voice, knowing. “I’m always on the road,” she says. She sounds nothing like Nina Hartley, but both actresses have a quality, a tone, that says, “You’re a guy, but I forgive you.”

  Tom Byron steps up behind her. He reaches around, gropes her crotch and chest. She laughs, then ignores him, and continues talking.

  Stagliano is cooler, aloof.

  “I’m here to see my friends,” he says, moving away from me.

  Tom clings to Mitch.

  Sikki says, “Ever since Jeanna got Tom into only working with condoms, he’s working a lot less. He’s getting a lot less sex. He hasn’t had to think about trying to pick up a girl for, like, more than ten years, y’know, since he was a kid.” Sikki pauses, smiling. “Well Tom has no fucking idea where to even begin. He’s kinda confused.”

  Sean Michaels, who has been in a naval officer uniform, changes into a Chicago Bulls jacket with his real name stitched into the shoulder, and a wolf mask.

  Flame is drunk, dancing barefoot, tits out. She pushes her boyfriend up against the bar. He’s drunk, too, and shirtless. His eyes look dead, and not just from the black makeup. Flame bends at her waist, pulls Rob’s dick out, and begins sucking it.

  Following pages: Tom Byron

  Rob sees me watching them. First he pulls his girlfriend’s dress up. He fingers her ass a little. Then he swings Flame around. She thrusts her hips forward, pulls her panties to the side. Rob empties his Heineken over her crotch, then Flame goes back down on him.

  People keep taking short trips upstairs to Sean’s apartment. It’s immaculate. There’s a framed Michael Jordan poster hanging in the foyer.

  Eight people crowd near the front of the one-bedroom. Sean asks everyone to keep it down. Ashlyn Gere, another porn star, is in a bedroom with the door closed. Sean says her baby is sleeping. When Gere sticks her head out, Sean asks everyone to go back downstairs.

  In the lounge the party is thinning out. A Spanish transvestite wearing a red satin dress gives Tom head while he leans back against the bar, next to Rob. Flame is still on her knees, or on them again, sucking Rob. The guys have their elbows on the bar, and each has a bottle of Heineken dangling from one hand.

  “I guess I’m kind of a slut,” Tom says, smiling.

  He closes his eyes, hangs his head back. Rob leers. The black eye makeup is smudged. He looks wrecked. A half-smile forms as he recognizes someone, makes some sort of connection. He lifts his free hand slowly, points, then looks down at the top of Flame’s head, at the blow job he’s getting, his outstretched arm left suspended.

  There are more people in the lobby than in the lounge, hanging out, making plans for the rest of the evening, or trying to. A guy who does porn soundtracks hears my idea for a coffee-table book about porn stars.

  “Why?” he says. “You think anyone cares about these people?”

  It’s midnight. Sikki is gone. Stagliano, too. Sharon Mitchell is still here.

  “Promise me you won’t forget to call me, OK?” she says.

  Tom comes out to the lobby, looking bored again, looking for something to do. He asks Mitch to come back to his place. She doesn’t say yes or no, just mentions another party she wants to go to.

  “I HAVE A REALLY NICE PICKUP TRUCK. I JUST DON’T HAVE MONEY FOR GAS,” APRIL Rayne says. Then she laughs. “Could you come get me?”

  April lives in a run-down-looking section of Hollywood east of Highland and north of Franklin.

  A small, punky girl with shoulder-length hair, dyed black, stands behind a screen door. She smiles, her face hard but friendly. April’s wearing a flannel shirt tied in a knot at her belly, jeans shorts, torn fishnet stockings, black motorcycle boots. Her belly-button is pierced.

  “I’m moving out,” she says. “I guess I’m moving in with my boyfriend. I can’t afford this place anymore. Not since I stopped doing porn.”

  The place is tidy. April pushes open a door off the living room. A StairMaster stands in the middle of a sea of clothing, luggage, miscellaneous porn-star paraphernalia. It’s like the second bedroom has been devoted to all of it.

  “I’m selling that,” she says, nodding at the exercise machine.

  “I have some pretty cool stuff—do you want costumes?” April stares at the pile of glittery getups. “Or just normal stuff, y’know, what I wear out and stuff. You can look in here if you want.”

  April Rayne

  She opens a neatly organized closet filled with shoes, designer-shredded rocker outfits, leather vests, a hanger with thirty belts—the kind of stuff groupie chicks love but usually can’t afford. MTV stuff.

  It doesn’t even occur to me to shoot her here when there’s a big empty studio in Hollywood. April fills a knapsack with some outfits she likes.

  “JEANNA TOLD YOU I’m not doing fuck films anymore, right?” she says. “I got a part in an independent feature. They’re gonna show it at Cannes. I’m gonna try and act more and you can’t get parts if you’re doing X. It’s like a union thing.”

  April smokes a Camel filter. We’re at a r
ed light on La Brea.

  “Anyway,” she continues, “after doing fifty videos the thrill was gone. Three months in this business is long enough.”

  I look at April when she says this, but she turns her head the other way, down Santa Monica Boulevard.

  April is impressed with the studio, as if she’s never been in a place like this. She checks it out, snoops around, then puts her bag on the makeup table. She takes her shirt off. April’s chest is a shock. Her tits jut out from the top of her torso, scream out. She’s only five-foot-three or -four and really skinny, which makes it more freaky. There’s no give to the flesh, and the shape is boxy. The scars under her nipples are red, fresh.

  My first reaction is panic. There’s no way to hide those scars, and no budget for re-touching every picture of a porn star with a tit job. The scars are the first place she applies makeup, though, and I kind of slow down, go with it, try to get into that April is topless, that I’m in Hollywood alone with a topless porn chick, which feels cool. Rocked out.

  She poses on the roof. April has style, and charisma. She connects. When she smiles, April makes you believe she’s happy. When she’s asked for a scowl she turns nasty. She’s a natural, the first one, of the girls I’ve shot so far. The clothes look cool, and April knows what to do to hide her tits, or flatter them.

  On the way here she seemed depressed. Now April exudes confidence, like she’s centered. I go with what I see in front of the camera, over anything else, because that’s the kind of image I want to believe and show the world. The Southern California sun begins its descent. Towering palm trees sway in the distance. April is a star.

  When the sun is gone April poses inside the studio. There’s a spotlight on a stand in the corner of the kitchen, so I shoot her there. April’s in a flowered dress. She starts with it on, but a minute later she’s showing me her tits again, and this time because I ask. April gets up on the sink, leans against the window and spreads her legs wide. She giggles, then smiles a big smile. It’s dirty. She’s a skinny little girl showing me her pussy, and it looks really, really good. April is the first porn star to truly flash me hard-core like this, slow and deliberate. Seeing her vagina, just shaven, bare and open—being alone with it—is different, more sexual, much more.

  I stop shooting, let the camera hang by its strap, and just look. She doesn’t mind. When I glance up at her face she’s still smiling, wicked. These are not pictures I’ll use. I know that.

  I step close to her. She looks down, and stops smiling.

  “I don’t think so, I mean . . . No . OK?” April says. “Is that all right?”

  She says it sadly. It’s almost like April is apologizing for my coming on to her, or for her saying no. I back away and April’s smile comes back, good as new, like she’s just as into posing as before.

  When the roll is finished she gives me a long hug.

  While packing, April talks about her boyfriend’s band, Dumpster. She says they opened for Guns n’ Roses at the Whiskey.

  “He’s a skinhead type,” she says. “I guess you could say I’ve been supporting him. Or I was, until recently. Y’know, since I stopped porn. They’re about to sign with Warner Bros.”

  April writes down her telephone number for the studio manager. He’d kept out of sight the whole time, until I disappeared to take a leak.

  “I’m into modeling,” she tells him.

  NEW YORK. HEATHER HUNTER WHISPERS.

  “Hey. Yeah, I recognize your voice, from the machine. I’ve been meaning to call you, been very busy, y’know. Madison gave you my number? That’s cool. Madison is cool.”

  She’s barely audible but at least it’s her voice, live. It’s a guy’s voice on her machine. I wasn’t even sure it was the right number. You can only leave so many messages.

  Heather’s apartment is in the basement of a building on Mulberry Street, just off Houston. The place is dreary—especially since today is one of the first warm, sunny days of spring—but it’s big enough, and in a hip enough area, that Heather probably pays two grand a month to live here.

  Heather is black. She was already a regular guest on Robin Byrd’s show, on cable in New York, way before she got into doing hard-core. Mascara, long eyelashes, bright red lipstick. She has curly hair extensions that hang down her back, almost to her rear end. And she’s tiny. She is attractive and she’s managed to become a pretty big porn star, which is not easy for a black girl to do. Heather even has a contract with Vivid Video.

  Her refrigerator is covered with color snapshots, a lot of them pictures of Heather with other porn stars. There’s an oil painting of Heather’s head and shoulders leaning against the wall near her sofa.

  “A fan of mine did that. Isn’t that so sweet?” she says.

  The painting is primitive but it captures her dreamy eyes. Heather says the guy who did it has sent her a lot of his art, all dedicated to her image, but that this one is the best.

  She lights a half-smoked joint and takes a couple hits. Heather coughs a deep one as she exhales then laughs a little. Her eyes water.

  Heather is finished with porn and adds she has no regrets. Another one getting out. Now she has a recording career that’s “much more gratifying.” Heather says she’s on Tommy Boy Records. She says she cut a dance single. Heather is tapped into the dance scene. Besides the snapshots, there are all kinds of invitations to parties she’s thrown at places like Tunnel and the Roxy taped up in the kitchen. “Jellybean spun that night,” she says, pointing at an old invitation for a party at Palladium.

  The buzzer rings. Heather whispers into the house phone and a few seconds later a group of clubby kids file into the apartment.

  MARCH 1992

  “These are my friends,” Heather says.

  They’re in awe of Heather. She has money. She’s traveled. Heather has her own apartment. Heather is famous. That goes a long way. These kids haven’t seen much more than the dance floors of local discos, just from the way they look. Street kids, homeless maybe, much younger than she.

  Heather follows them into her bedroom and closes the door. She comes out a long five minutes later by herself. Her friends are coughing and laughing in her bedroom. The apartment is getting cloudy.

  “They’re really great,” she says, kind of like a big sister.

  Plans are made to do a photo shoot—she says she’s excited about it—then, a week later, Heather’s number has been disconnected. No further information available.

  SHOW WORLD FOLLIES. SHARON MITCHELL IS ON HER BACK, LEGS SPREAD, AT THE END of one runway, a couple of balled-up dollar bills near her—literally two singles. The song ends and she gets up and dances. It’s hippie-ish, a throwback. Sharon Mitchell is an “erotic dancer.” She has a serious expression.

  There’s a row of booths with curtains in the back. Two flashy guys noisily file into one, along with four house girls. A hostess shuts the curtain behind them then someone delivers an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne, passing it in. It’s the middle of the afternoon.

  After the show I knock on the dressing room door. Mitch shouts for me to come in. She’s naked, standing in between two on-duty New York cops.

  “Hey, honey!” she says, hugging me.

  Mitch looks high. The cops acknowledge me with nods.

  “Baby, would you do the honors,” she says, handing me a Polaroid camera. Each cop poses with Mitch for a picture, then she autographs them.

  “Guys, I’ve just gotta get ready for the next show, OK? Thanks for coming up,” she says, like a pal, ushering them to the door. She gives each one a hug and a kiss on his cheek. The second one squeezes her butt.

  After they’re gone Mitch confides, “As long as you look like someone’s sister, aunt, or mother you’ll always work in this business.” She lets out a big laugh then says earnestly, “Those guys are great. It’s so great being back in New York, y’know? It’s home.”

  She pulls on a tank top big and loose enough that her tits still show, and lime-green terry short shorts.
Mitch is dark, like she’s been in a tanning booth. Her face is crinkly and old looking, but she’s the cheeriest porn star I’ve seen and acts the youngest. Her big nose scrunches up when she smiles. Her friendliness makes her pretty. Mitch is considered the ugly-duckling porn star but her body is toned; she’s sexy. I tell her she looks good.

  “Thanks so much, honey. I work out, y’know, every day, I work it all out.”

  She takes my wrist, pulls down the waistband of her shorts with her other hand and pushes my finger into her crotch. My hand might as well be a block of wood, or frozen. Mitch squeezes three times.

  “See, I’m just completely in control of my body,” she says. “In this business you have to be.”

  It’ll be years before I recognize the parallel between Mitch’s move—or Jeanna Fines ordering me to feel her tits—and the cock-rock posture I cultivated in high school. It’s beyond parallel. “Touch it, don’t be afraid,” I remember semiaffectionately daring a girl in a cafeteria while pushing her hand into my crotch. The girl wasn’t afraid, and I wasn’t ready for that. But anyway with the porn stars I’m on the other side of it, which I’m not used to. Mitch looks into my eyes with her heavy-lidded ones for some response or a sign—something that will verify that her vagina/stun gun has rendered me limp, a nonthreat. It’s all about control.

  SHOW WORLD FOLLIES

  I mumble “yeah” like an idiot. I’d set out on an innocent research trip, and now my finger has been in the Porn Star’s Pussy.

  As she’s leaving the club, a guy in a suit, maybe the manager, says, “Miss Mitchell, you only got forty-five minutes, so don’t get lost, OK?”

  “Aw, honey,” she answers, “You know I got it all under control. I’ll be ready early.”

  He’s not satisfied. When he glances my way it’s not a tough guy look, not even distrustful. His expression seems to say, “Please, buddy, make my life easy, save me a headache. Get this lady back in time.”